Sony Xperia M4 Aqua Pictures Leaked Before MWC Announcement

As we told you yesterday, Sony is planning to announce two new Xperia devices at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. One of the two devices is expected to be the new Xperia Z4 Tablet with a 2K display while the other one will be the successor to the Xperia M2 Aqua from last year – Xperia M4 Aqua. Today alleged live pictures of the handset have leaked courtesy of Xperia Blog and give us a detailed look at the device.

As you can see from the images, the Xperia M4 Aqua will be similar to its predecessor in many ways and is unmistakably an Xperia device from the design point of view. However, despite the similarities, there is one major difference that is quite apparent. The Xperia M4 Aqua seems to show an exposed USB port, no more annoying plastic flap that might get lose over time. The microSD card slot does appear to have the port flap though, but then that’s not something that should worry most users as you aren’t likely to open the microSD port flap multiple times. It appears to have the nylon corners like its predecessor, meant to help with the durability of the device.

Based on the earlier leak, the Xperia M4 Aqua will feature a 5.2” display with 1280 x 720 resolution and a pixel density of 293PPI, Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octa-core chipset based on the 64-bit Cortex-A57/A53 architectures, 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage with a microSD card slot for further expansion, 13MP rear camera, 5MP front-facing camera, and Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box. If we do not see any other smartphone get announced by the Japanese manufacturer at the Mobile World Congress next week, the Xperia M4 Aqua will be the first Sony Xperia smartphone to be launched with Android 5.0 Lollipop out of the box.

As Sony faces stiff challenges with its smartphone business, it will be interesting to see if Sony can pull off a surprise by pricing the Xperia M4 Aqua competitively against the competition. For Sony’s Xperia business to survive, the company needs to offer competitive products that should not carry a price premium as that is essentially the main reason why it has struggled to compete with Chinese smartphone makers that offer devices with as good or better specs at a much lower price.